Health and Happiness

We love summer around here. What I especially like about summer is the lack of sickness. Yeah, I here about someone catching something here or there but over all it's just a time of year when the colds and flus are far and few in between. *Knock on wood* we haven't had any sickness this summer. I think the last time that Joaquin was sick was in February or March when we all dealt with a flu bug of some sort. Now that we don't have the ng tube anymore I'm hoping that we'll skate through this winter without pneumonia or any major illnesses. I do expect the colds but one big cause of Joaquin's upper respiratory illnesses were because of the ng. We were told this by numerous doctors.

Nana and Papa were up visiting this past weekend. They are always lured up here by the prospects of not only seeing the grandchildren, but it's also Hot August Nights here - which means lots of cools cars. Grandpa, Joaquin, Sage and I walked downtown one early afternoon to check the cars out. It's still pretty hot here so we didn't spend a whole lot of time there but Joaquin did enjoy himself. We spent some time with Chris's sister and brother-in-law while his parents were in town. He and his cousin Aiden (Chris's nephew) are at a great age where they play so well together. Cousin Aiden is way into Batman and all sorts of superheros and Joaquin loves to play along.

Joaquin's thing right now is "Cars" the movie and just cars in general. He likes to run and pretend he's a car complete with the car noises and everything. He's also an avid reader - we read lots of Berenstein Bears book as well as Mercer Mayer's books.

Life without the ng has been great! We haven't had to put it back in since Sage took it out, although we have had to put the threat on the table when he's not being cooperative about drinking his water. That doesn't happen very often, thankfully. He's getting less and less resistant to drinking what he needs to during the day. There are those days where it's like pulling teeth but we always manage to get all he needs. It's nice to have him drink all his water in the day, that way he's not getting it over night and soaking his clothes and the sheets. This would happen usually every night. The other night he fell asleep and I hadn't put a pull-up on him and forgot to until it was morning and we were waking up. I asked him if he was wet and he said no. Sure enough, he wasn't and got up right away to use the bathroom. So much change for Joaquin since he's turned three - it's like the big boy golden age or something.

Sage is doing well too. He's standing and cruising around. He's cautious about walking on his own but I think that's his Virgo nature. We anticipate those first steps any day. His first words were "dada" and "mama" (which sounds more like, "mooma"), but his first officiall word besides the usual was "ball". He likes to say it often. He's also pointing and identifying objects like when I asked him where la bella luna (moon) was he looked to the sky where she was and pointed. The developmental changes that just seem to come from no where never cease to amaze me.

Our summer is winding down but we've had lots of fun. We don't have much of anything else on the agenda for the rest of it except more bbq's and swimming!